An old Nissan where two children suffocated inside in Rumbek. (Photo: Yang Ater).

Lakes State police said two children suffocated to death after they were locked for hours inside an old abandoned vehicle where they were playing near the Civil Defense headquarters in Lakes State, last week.

Acting police commissioner Maj. Gen. Enock Majok Machar said the bodies of the minors aged 5 and 8 years, were found on March 12, and two fire brigade officers found on duty were detained for questioning as part of an investigation.

Gen. Majok said the death of the children by suffocation came after their parents exhaustively searched for them in vain. He said fire brigade soldiers found them in the Nissan Xtrial.

“They called the police, and through investigation, it was found that these children died in the broken car due to lack of oxygen. The other one is big and another boy is small,” Majok said.

The police official narrated that a third child who is mentally ill had closed the car door windows and the victims entered before he locked them inside.

“One of the children who has mental health problems shut the car’s windows and they could not make it again to reopen it and the windows of this vehicle were closed for a very long time since all these years. There was also no one who saw these children by the time they entered into the vehicle.”

Police was reportedly informed at 9:00pm and the children were taken to Rumbek State Hospital where postmortem examinations concluded that they had died due to lack of oxygen in the car.

Meanwhile, Teran Madit Teran, the Medical Director of Rumbek State Hospital, said the hospital examinations found that the children had some bruises on their backs and upper limbs.

“First of all, one of the findings that we saw is only bruises on the skins both bodies at the back, and upper limb. Small bruises that available on the skins and there were no any signs of physical assault or any either other wounds,” he said.

“For me, what I can say is that we don’t do anything to open any internal operation, ours is just external works to exams the body.”

He further said the cause of the children’s death might be excessive heat exposure that caused organ failure after staying for many hours inside the closed vehicle.